Is this GOEX powder??

[Bigmon]

Checking for a friend that is even less computer savy than I, and that is saying something?
Somewhere he has plundered some powder in red and white cans that says "GEARHART OWEN INDUSTRIES"
He says it does not say Goex anywhere??
I have not seen it, but believe he can read, somewhat.  I could be wrong and often am.
Any info on the matter would be appreciated.
Regards to you all and a great site.
Bigmon

[smylee grouch]

Sounds like a question for the Mad Monk. 

[Mad Monk]

That is in fact  GOEX.

When Gearhart-Owens purchased the black powder business from du Pont they were known as Gearheart_Owens Industries.  You would see GOI on the cans.

Then a few years later Gearhart and Owens began to have problems.  You then see Gearhart-Owens Explosives and GOEX shows up on the cans.  Then Gearhart and Owens split.  The one partner wanted no parts of the military black powder business.  The Texas munitions plant was a safety nightmare for the company.  After the split the company known as GOEX became part of Pengo Industries.  Then by the mid 1980s Pengo was forced into bankruptcy and the company was watched over by a bankruptcy court into the mid 1990s.  It had been taken over by a large investment group.

[Mad Monk]

I am still on my first morning coffee so I missed something in my previous messages.
Look on the bottom of those GOI powder cans.  You will see two lines of code.  The first line is a process lot number.  The second line shows when it was packed.  If the second line gives the production year as 1974 beware!  Horrid stuff.  Made during a year of extreme drought.  Weak and fouls badly in the gun.  The U.S. Army and Navy had all sorts of gun problems with 1974 powder production.  They still use black powder as an intermediate primer in artillery.  So if the second line of code  shows 1974 production lots use it for garden fertilizer.

[Daryl]

LOL- back then, we used that GOI powder, Meteor along Curtis & Harvey powder.  The GOI developed better ballistics than the Meteor or C&H of the day, granulation to granulation. I do recall some of it really did foul badly - just tightened up the ball and patch combinations, is all- good results happened.
One .58 I had used 165gr. 2F GO with the 675gr. slightly modified #57730 Lyman Minnie to get 1,325fps.  A mere 150gr. got it going 1,250fps.  Those kicked a bit- especially with the hooked & narrow Hawken butt plate.

I also list 200gr. of 2F G-O powder making 1,850fps with a .022" denim patched round ball of .575" diameter. According to Lyman's book of the day that load developed about 10,200LUP - which is 1,000LUP less than a 32" bl. .50 produced with 80gr. G-O 3F, or a .36 produced with 45gr. 3F.

Recoil, however is a different matter.

[hanshi]

Mad Monk has told you everything about that powder.  I've used plenty of GOI powder and had no complaints - I guess I was still using old cans of Dupont in '74.

[Bigmon]

Thanks to all the info guys,  probably more info than we can use.  Aint too brite!

Called my friend.
On TOP of the can is code  Lot # 0302
On bottom of can 73AU21B

Am I correct in assuming that would be 1973 production?
And would then probably be ok?

He has I think several pounds and will use it if ok?

Or if not I could probably mix it with other BP for firing blanks in my 1" cannon, just for noise??
I usually only use 125 Gr or so?

Thanks, this is a great resourse, this site
Bigmon

[Mad Monk]

Thanks to all the info guys,  probably more info than we can use.  Aint too brite!

Called my friend.
On TOP of the can is code  Lot # 0302
On bottom of can 73AU21B

Am I correct in assuming that would be 1973 production?
And would then probably be ok?

He has I think several pounds and will use it if ok?

Or if not I could probably mix it with other BP for firing blanks in my 1" cannon, just for noise??
I usually only use 125 Gr or so?

Thanks, this is a great resourse, this site
Bigmon

The lot code you give is 1973, August 21 packed on "B" shift.  "B" shift was the only shift seen in these lots.
The 1973 production was not too bad.  But the summer of 1974 saw a serious drought.  The U.S. Army blew the back end out of a 155mm howitzer.  Traced to a problem with the intermediate primer powder used in the "snake" that formed the intermediate primer.  They described the 1974 bp lots as "deviant" lots.   Then at the same time the Navy was developing the 5 inch and 7 inch automatic gun mounts.  They had a number of "catastrophic breech blows" which were also traced to the so-called deviant lots.  With these deviant lots the bacterial induced chemical decomposition was greatest in the surface regions of the grains.  When ignited by the initial primer the grains would not readily ignite.  The slow ignition and initial flamespreading through the primer tube would then suddenly speed up.  The delayed and non-uniform ignition of the main charge of smokeless gave a big pressure spike with the main charge.  Which would either give a funny report or simply take the breech of the gun apart.

As those drought production powder lots aged in storage the velocities would steadily go down.  Dixon Muzzleloading had cans returned where you simply could not ignite the powder in either a flintlock or a percussion rifle.   We had some seriously long hangfires in flintlocks with those drought production lots.  I had a large supply of the 1974 summer lots out of a "Target Grade" powder GOI tried to sell in 1975 to the NMLRA bench gun shooters.  Used two of these lots for my start on the bacteria in the powder work.

[Mad Monk]

Bigmon,

Check for a private message to you on the board.

[Daryl]

We seemed to have escaped that 74 powder - thankfully. Nasty sounding powder.
The action almost sounds like the wave-action, detonations happening with reduced loading slow burning powder in large cased suppository rifles.

[Mad Monk]

We seemed to have escaped that 74 powder - thankfully. Nasty sounding powder.
The action almost sounds like the wave-action, detonations happening with reduced loading slow burning powder in large cased suppository rifles.

A man who shot bench guns at Friendship was working at Aberdeen Proving grounds at that time.  He was in the group working on the 30mm round for the gun in the A-10 Warthog.  He ran pressure bomb graphs on several grain sizes from the "Target Grade" GOI was trying to get into the target shooting crowd.  Out of 5 bomb firings you would see at least one firing that gave an ignition spike higher than the pressure produced by the actual burning of the charge.  He noted that in a string of 5 shots in the bench gun he would see at least one wild flyer in the group.

If you used "soft ignition", as with a flintlock, you would get a long delayed ignition and then a regular burn rate.  In a gun with a brisant ignition you might see a short high pressure surge and then a regular burn.  That initial pressure surge killed accuracy and it would be akin to driving the projectile up the bore with a hammer rather than a steadily increasing rate of acceleration.

[chuckm]

I have 4 pounds of 74 oct21b, lot 0214
fertilizer? or try it?

[Mad Monk]

I have 4 pounds of 74 oct21b, lot 0214
fertilizer? or try it?

I would try a few shots with it.  The drought in 74 ended late.  Typically these 10 year cycle hard droughts are broken by hurricanes that came up the East coast.  If it was produced after the hurricane it is chemically stable because they switched back into the municipal water supply.  If you get heavy bore fouling you will know it is badly degraded.  I dealt with a friendship shooter who followed my checks on GOEX production related to the weather.  If he spotted lots made a week or two after a hurricane went through that area he bought a lot of it for his competition shooting.  It is a chance so run a few shots to see what it loos like in the gun.

[chuckm]

Thanks for the reply
I am shooting a match at Canal Fulton this weekend and will try a few shots and report back

[chuckm]

shot the 74 oct GOEX FFg, 50 cal....shot in a match..wiped between shots..was using KIK, batch 00.04, had hard fouling at the breech, non with the GOEX..shot close to the same Point of aim
actually won a couple

Chuck